Introduction

This analysis explores the relationships of agricultural commodity loss, at a county level, from 2001-2015, across the three state region of the Pacific Northwest (Washington, Idaho, and Oregon), and then focuses on the Inland Pacific Northwest (INPW - 26 county region that encapsulates portions of Washington, Idaho, and Oregon).

Here we explore the entire range of commodities and damage causes, identifying the top revenue loss commodities and their most pertinent damage causes - as indicated from the USDA’s agricultural commodity loss insurance archive. We also explore claim freqency, and finally zero in on the top 5 commodities for the region, and examine specific loss and claim frequency by year and damage cause.

We perform several steps to examine the full set of data, and to narrow down factors to a usable form for further modeling analysis.

Step 1. Data Preparation: Loading and Transforming data. Here we load commodity loss data, and aggregate by differing factors, so we can examine losses on an annual basis, by county, damage cause, and commodity.

Step 2. Pacific Northwest (PNW) Overview. Here we examine overall commodity loss for the entire three state region of Washington, Idaho, and Oregon, which comes primarily from three primary agricultural regions - the IPNW (mostly Washington, with portions of northern Idaho and northeastern Oregon), the Southern Idaho Valley (Idaho), and the Willamette Valley (Oregon).

Step 3. PNW region overview of insurance loss by year, damage cause, and commodity, and county: 2001-2015

Step 4. PNW region overview of insurance Loss claim counts by year, damage cause, commodity, and county: 2001-2015

Step 5. Inland Pacific Northwest (IPNW) Overview. Given our review of insurance loss for the entire PNW - with a large proportion of loss occuring in the IPNW, were here focus on this region and more specifically examine loss and claim counts.

Step 6. IPNW region overview of Insurance Loss FREQUENCY by commodity and damage cause: 2001-2015

Step 7. IPNW region overview of Insurance Loss claim counts: 2001-2015

Step 8. APPLES: IPNW region overview of Insurance Loss 2001-2015

Step 9. BARLEY: IPNW region overview of Insurance Loss 2001-2015

Step 10. WHEAT: IPNW region overview of Insurance Loss 2001-2015

Step 11. CHERRIES: IPNW region overview of Insurance Loss 2001-2015

Step 12. DRY PEAS: IPNW region overview of Insurance Loss 2001-2015

Step 1. Data Prep

The first step is to load Pacific Northwest agricultural insurance commodity loss data, aggregate by county, damage cause and commodity, remove zeros, transform the loss values ($) into cube root and logrithmic outputs, and scale and center the data.

Original data file for all insurance claims for the Pacific Northwest, can be found here:

https://github.com/erichseamon/paper-PHD1/blob/master/data/RMA_PNW_2001_2015.csv

Aggregated data file, which summarizes data by year, county, commodity, and damage cause, for just the Pacific Northwest, can be found here:

https://github.com/erichseamon/paper-PHD1/blob/master/data/RMA_damage_PNW_2001_2015.csv

All code that generates the following graphs and tables, can be found here:

https://github.com/erichseamon/paper-PHD1/


Step 1a. Original Insurance Loss Dataset - Pacific Northwest

The following table is an example of the original data that was acquired from the USDA Risk Management Agency (RMA). Each record represents an individual insurance claim.

year state county commodity damagecause monthcode month acres loss
11338 2001 ID Ada All Other Crops Drought 9 SEP 17.000 153.00
11339 2001 ID Ada All Other Crops Heat 8 AUG 105.200 5249.00
11340 2001 ID Ada All Other Crops Freeze 4 APR 125.000 4500.00
11341 2001 ID Ada All Other Crops Wind/Excess Wind 5 MAY 50.000 1800.00
11342 2001 ID Ada All Other Crops Wind/Excess Wind 4 APR 92.500 3330.00
11343 2001 ID Bannock WHEAT Drought 8 AUG 133.000 1212.00
11344 2001 ID Bannock WHEAT Drought 9 SEP 777.520 24807.00
11345 2001 ID Bannock WHEAT Drought 7 JUL 3529.754 54726.46
11346 2001 ID Bannock WHEAT Heat 7 JUL 19.796 2371.60
11347 2001 ID Bannock WHEAT Heat 8 AUG 25.000 904.00

Step 1b. Aggregated Insurance Loss Dataset - Pacific Northwest

The following table is an example of an aggregated dataset derived from the original files. Here we have summarized claims by year, county, commodity, and damage cause. Each unique combination is summarized, which includes the total summarized loss, the number of claims, the total summarized acreage, loss per acre, loss per claim, and acres per claim. This dataset was the basis for our data examination.

year state county commodity damagecause loss count acres lossperacre lossperclaim acresperclaim
11 2014 ID Ada All Other Crops Area Plan Crops Only 1398 1 0 0.0000000 1398.0 0
12 2015 ID Ada All Other Crops Area Plan Crops Only 11810 1 0 0.0000000 11810.0 0
211 2008 OR Baker All Other Crops Area Plan Crops Only 15292 2 5482 2.7894929 7646.0 2741
212 2010 OR Baker All Other Crops Area Plan Crops Only 1819 2 2282 0.7971078 909.5 1141
215 2009 ID Bannock All Other Crops Area Plan Crops Only 2284 1 600 3.8066667 2284.0 600
245 2008 ID Bear Lake All Other Crops Area Plan Crops Only 8102 1 2468 3.2828201 8102.0 2468
246 2012 ID Bear Lake All Other Crops Area Plan Crops Only 7459 1 2468 3.0222853 7459.0 2468
291 2010 ID Bingham All Other Crops Area Plan Crops Only 4197 1 192 21.8593750 4197.0 192
292 2011 ID Bingham All Other Crops Area Plan Crops Only 7769 1 240 32.3708333 7769.0 240
293 2012 ID Bingham All Other Crops Area Plan Crops Only 6786 1 168 40.3928571 6786.0 168

Step 2: PNW Study Area

The following map shows the three key agricultural regions that make up over 95% of all agricultural insurance loss for the three state region of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.



Step 3: PNW insurance claim loss summary

PNW total insurance loss by year, 2001-2015
2001-2015
damage cause loss
Drought $719,610,396
Decline in Price $336,993,981
Heat $267,376,106
Frost $170,482,583
Freeze $149,373,220
Excess Moisture/Precip/Rain $148,556,853
Hail $127,772,100
Cold Wet Weather $86,741,055
Cold Winter $67,118,523
Failure Irrig Supply $57,087,916
PNW total insurance loss by year, 2001-2015
2001-2015
commodity loss
WHEAT $1,444,149,995
CHERRIES $156,670,513
APPLES $156,063,380
POTATOES $117,459,400
BARLEY $102,125,046
DRY PEAS $58,038,162
PNW total insurance loss by year, 2001-2015
2001-2015
year loss
2001 $66,499,267
2002 $96,367,644
2003 $103,553,264
2004 $52,006,242
2005 $72,871,250
2006 $63,467,130
2007 $83,252,301
2008 $150,480,619
2009 $545,650,029
2010 $83,829,994
2011 $115,965,036
2012 $89,684,692
2013 $171,121,810
2014 $222,526,098
2015 $296,416,750


Step 4: PNW insurance claim freqency summary

##    commodity         region       loss
## 42  DRY PEAS PNW minus IPNW    1228785
## 25  POTATOES           IPNW   10232481
## 47    GRAPES PNW minus IPNW   14439829
## 16    GRAPES           IPNW   17370434
## 4     BARLEY           IPNW   34102839
## 11  DRY PEAS           IPNW   56809377
## 34    APPLES PNW minus IPNW   66872348
## 35    BARLEY PNW minus IPNW   68022207
## 8   CHERRIES           IPNW   76118306
## 38  CHERRIES PNW minus IPNW   80552207
## 3     APPLES           IPNW   89191032
## 57  POTATOES PNW minus IPNW  107226919
## 63     WHEAT PNW minus IPNW  230004351
## 31     WHEAT           IPNW 1214145644



Step 5: IPNW Study Area



Step 6: IPNW insurance claim loss summary



Step 7: IPNW insurance claim loss summary

IPNW region total insurance loss by year, 2001-2015
2001-2015
year loss
2001 $51,669,997
2002 $75,193,597
2003 $71,122,910
2004 $27,690,033
2005 $42,829,865
2006 $50,433,271
2007 $47,600,330
2008 $118,284,490
2009 $441,709,248
2010 $52,081,926
2011 $68,218,646
2012 $47,232,701
2013 $118,373,608
2014 $177,267,234
2015 $240,900,597
IPNW region total insurance loss by commodity, 2001-2015
2001-2015
commodity loss
WHEAT $1,214,345,016
APPLES $89,191,032
CHERRIES $74,853,794
DRY PEAS $56,809,377
BARLEY $34,102,839
GRAPES $17,370,434
GREEN PEAS $13,520,586
POTATOES $10,232,481
All Other Crops $9,767,559
CANOLA $8,913,093
ADJUSTED GROSS REVENUE-LITE $8,128,725
IPNW region total insurance loss by damage cause, 2001-2015
2001-2015
damage cause loss
Drought $677,383,459
Decline in Price $290,497,980
Heat $197,657,025
Frost $92,483,544
Hail $81,461,121
Freeze $77,583,017
Excessive Moisture $76,603,640
Cold Wet Weather $54,410,357
Cold Winter $33,893,991
Wind/Excess Wind $12,442,392



STEP 8: APPLES, 2001-2015 for the IPNW


IPNW region APPLES total insurance loss by damage cause, 2001-2015
2001-2015
damagecause loss
Hail $40,971,994
Frost $17,016,586
Freeze $14,538,852
Cold Wet Weather $9,246,848
Wind/Excess Wind $2,934,044
Heat $2,422,480
Other $2,060,230


STEP 9: BARLEY, 2001-2015 for the IPNW


IPNW region BARLEY total insurance loss by damage cause, 2001-2015
2001-2015
damagecause loss
Drought $19,635,980
Excess Moisture/Precip/Rain $4,726,399
Heat $4,553,252
Hail $1,466,219
Frost $1,247,180
Other $1,085,647
Decline in Price $858,459
Cold Wet Weather $529,703



STEP 10: WHEAT, 2001-2015 for the IPNW

IPNW region WHEAT total insurance loss by damage cause, 2001-2015
2001-2015
damagecause loss
Drought $626,038,990
Decline in Price $243,681,710
Heat $150,761,018
Frost $45,605,476
Excess Moisture/Precip/Rain $33,421,663
Cold Winter $28,004,014
Freeze $27,203,439
Cold Wet Weather $24,511,419
Hail $20,390,532
Other $9,724,032
Plant Disease $2,950,763
Other (Snow-Lightning-Etc.) $2,051,960



STEP 11: CHERRIES, 2001-2015 for the IPNW

IPNW region CHERRIES total insurance loss by damage cause, 2001-2015
2001-2015
damagecause loss
Excessive Moisture $20,569,890
Frost $15,459,348
Freeze $14,625,022
Decline in Price $8,447,020
Cold Wet Weather $6,725,206
Heat $2,246,093
Hail $2,034,613
Other (Snow-Lightning-Etc.) $1,876,035
Other $1,467,713
Wind/Excess Wind $1,402,854



STEP 12: DRY PEAS, 2001-2015 for the IPNW

IPNW region DRY PEAS total insurance loss by damage cause, 2001-2015
2001-2015
damagecause loss
Drought $22,635,712
Heat $10,399,165
Excessive Moisture $8,618,433
Hail $5,176,545
Cold Wet Weather $2,971,140
Decline in Price $2,936,766
Other $2,067,635
Wind/Excess Wind $1,079,927
Frost $924,053